The separation of mixtures into individual constituents is necessary for a number of industrial processes. For example, a number of solvents, such as mineral spirits, chlorinated solvents, alcohols, glycols, petroleum-based or synthetic waste oils, or paint-related waste can become unsuitable for their original purpose due to accumulation of impurities or loss of original properties. What is needed is a separation system to promote the beneficial recycling and reuse of spent solvents and the proper handling and treatment of a broad spectrum of known or unknown mixtures. There exist a number of separation methods that attempt to meet industrial and environmental standards; however, these methods suffer from a number of disadvantages.
One of the most common methods used for separating fluid mixtures is conventional distillation, which generally involves the separation of mixtures based on differences in the boiling points of the constituents; however, these methods suffer from numerous disadvantages. For conventional distillation methods, there is little or no ability for an operator to target the constituent of the mixture to enrich as product. In general, the constituent of the mixture that is enriched as product using conventional distillation methods is naturally predetermined to be the constituent having a lower boiling point; thus, conventional distillation is not a reasonable separation method to employ when it is desired to enrich the constituent of the mixture having a higher boiling point as distillate product.
Additionally, there exist a number of industrially significant azeotropic mixtures, which typically cannot be separated by conventional distillation methods without the inclusion of an additional constituent to help facilitate separation. Typically, this is performed by adding an additional azeotrope. However, the addition of an azeotrope presents unnecessary complexity to separation of the original mixture into its individual constituents because the azeotrope must then be separated from the mixture.
There are a number of other types of constituent mixtures in which conventional distillation methods are not reasonable methods for separation. Examples include: 1) mixtures of constituents in which the constituents have similar boiling points, and 2) mixtures of constituents in which at least one of the constituents, at elevated temperatures, degrades or irreversibly changes its own molecular structure or the molecular structure of another constituent in an undesirable manner.